2005-06-12

MediaWiki
---------

MediaWiki is the software used for Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) and the
other Wikimedia Foundation websites. Compared to other wikis, it has an
excellent range of features and support for high-traffic websites using
multiple servers (Wikimedia sites peak in the 5000+ requests per second range
as of November 2005).

While quite usable on smaller sites, you may find you have to "roll your own"
local documentation, and some aspects of configuration may seem overcomplicated
because MediaWiki is primarily targeted as an in-house tool.

See the files RELEASE-NOTES, INSTALL, and UPGRADE for details on system
requirements and installation procedure.


The MediaWiki software was written by:
 * Lee Daniel Crocker
 * Magnus Manske
 * Jan Hidders
 * Brion Vibber
 * Axel Boldt
 * Geoffrey T. Dairiki
 * Tomasz Wegrzanowski
 * Erik Moeller
 * Tim Starling
 * Gabriel Wicke
 * Ashar Voultoiz
 * Evan Prodromou
 * Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
 * Niklas Laxström
 * Several others

The contributors hold the copyright to this work, and it is licensed
under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later[1]
(see http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html). Derivative works and later
versions of the code must be free software licensed under the same
terms. This includes "extensions" that use MediaWiki functions or
variables; see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins
for details.

The Wikimedia Foundation currently has no legal rights to the software,
although copyright may be assigned to it by individual contributors at a later
date. Wikimedia has not funded any of the development work.

[1] Sections of code written exclusively by Lee Crocker or Erik Moeller are
also released into the public domain, which does not impair the obligations of
users under the GPL for use of the whole code or other sections thereof.

Many thanks to the Wikipedia regulars for testing and suggestions.

The official website for mediawiki is located at:
  http://www.mediawiki.org/

The code is currently maintained at SourceForge under the project "wikipedia",
module name "phase3". You can view the code in CVS there:

  http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/phase3/

Please report bugs and make feature requests in our Bugzilla system:

  http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org

Documentation and discussion on new features may be found at:

  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_development
  

If you are setting up your own wiki based on this software, it is highly
recommended that you subscribe to mediawiki-announce:

  http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

The mailing list is very low volume, and is intended primarily for
announcements of new versions, bug fixes, and security issues.


For installation and upgrade details, see the files RELEASE-NOTES, INSTALL,
and UPGRADE.